During Hollywood's golden age, Walt Disney Co. owned the animated short category at the Academy Awards. Ten of the first 11 Oscars presented, including eight in a row beginning in 1932, went to the company that built its now massive brand around an animated mouse.

But after three more wins—in 1953, '68 and '69—Disney went missing for 33 years, during which the prize went primarily to foreign and independent films, including three from an upstart called Pixar.

Last year, the dry spell broke as Disney won with the romantic and elegant "Paperman," which ran in front of its feature "Wreck-It Ralph." Now, the Mouse House would like to get back to its habit of winning multiple animated short Oscars in a row, while at the same time taking home its first for a movie starring Mickey.

"Get a Horse!" has had the good fortune of being seen by millions, because it plays in front of "Frozen," but also has the problem of getting little individual attention—because it's paired with a blockbuster hit that is itself a favorite for the animated feature Oscar.

The return of Mickey Mouse to the big screen comes after 18 years—"Runaway Brain" of 1995 was nominated but didn't win an Oscar. In "Get a Horse!," director Lauren MacMullan wanted to return to the original 1920s-era Mickey Mouse—not just in simple black-and-white, but in spirit. Here, he's a rascal who doesn't mind pitchforking an antagonist in the rear end and has stopped acting as if the responsibilities of a $100 billion-plus corporation are on his shoulders.

The plot is a simple and typical: Mickey meets Minnie, the loudmouthed and lascivious Peg-Leg Pete kidnaps Minnie, and Mickey gets her back. The context is an era when wealthy city dwellers like Pete would cruise the country roads in autos and harass horse-drawn carts like the one that Mickey and his friends ride.

"It was going to be a lost short," explained Ms. MacMullan, a television veteran making her big-screen directing debut and working with a team of 14 animators. She envisioned "Get a Horse!" as Disney's fifth short of 1928, after the pioneering "Steamboat Willie" and before "The Barn Dance."

That presented another problem: "How do we prove to people that we did it?" Her solution: After 95 seconds looking like a 1928 short, the film switches gears and Mickey and his horse explode out of the screen, complete in color and computer-animated 3-D.

The artists of "Get a Horse!" not only had to put computer-generated imagery and hand-drawn work on-screen simultaneously, but also had to draw in an archaic style. "To get it right, we had to unlearn a lot of things we knew about making animation fluid and beautiful," said Eric Goldberg, the head of 2-D animation and something of a legend in the field: He drew Robin Williams's "genie" character in "Aladdin."

Among the unusual goals for Mr. Goldberg's team was recapturing a "rubber hose" style of the 1920s in which characters' appendages are seemingly weightless and change shape at will: Mickey's arm becomes a set of stairs and his mouth a bugle.

Perhaps the most special touch of all, and one likely to get the attention of the Academy's many older voters, is the film's use of original voice recordings by Walt Disney himself for every line of dialogue by Mickey Mouse. An assistant editor was charged with gathering "everything Walt ever said," explained Ms. McMullan. When they couldn't find an instance of him saying "red," the editor strung together separate instances of the company founder saying "rrr," "eh" and "duh."

The result: Walt Disney's first on-screen credit as voice talent since 1948.

Disney and all if the animation houses lost so much when they shifted to computers. I am amazed that they actually still have actual artists on the payroll. That said, the real drawings done by real people have anyways been something to awe at. Look at Steamboat Willie all the way up to the Beauty and the Beast Movie by Disney. Amazing work.

Agreed I found "Frozen" to be somewhat dull and predictable and filled with way too much singing (that seemed to be the object of the directors: to score a nomination for best song or music). This detracted from the overall development of the storyline.

This short was the best part of the whole movie experience. I would see this short again but not "Frozen".

I saw this when taking my niece and nephews to see "Frozen". While I found "Frozen" to be dull, this short was a true gem. One of the sad things that happened to the Mickey Mouse character as it matured was that it transitioned from being a humorous wise-guy into a somewhat dull saint. Donald Duck got all the good lines. However, this Mickey harkens back to when the character was interesting. The black and white portions were so authentic, that I truly thought I was viewing an old cartoon until the color portion appeared. I didn't see it in 3D, but it was still very entertaining and extremely creative. Well done!

This copy is for your personal, non-commercial use only. Distribution and use of this material are governed by our Subscriber Agreement and by copyright law. For non-personal use or to order multiple copies, please contact Dow Jones Reprints at 1-800-843-0008 or visit www.djreprints.com.